At the End of Progress, We May Consider the Blackbird

The final dilemma of our budding Utopia turned out to be
a leaking basement pipe in Enterprise, Alabama.
Thousands had gathered to take part in history.
Dissertations were written by famous Harvard professors,
theories of what it meant to finally achieve the perfection
we always knew was rightfully ours. Spiritual revelations
were promised. Divinity, expected. The crowd circled the small
southern cottage with a general impatience:
it was about time the universe conceded to us.

We watched on the television.
The cameras zoomed in on the pipe as it was tightened.
Though it was you who pointed out the plumber’s wrist,
his veins, pulsing blue, seemed to parrot the water
droplets as they fell. I counted them; tapped out
their pleading into the valleys of your palm.

The plumber put his tools down before walking
off-screen. There was no applause, I remember that,
and I had counted nineteen when everyone dispersed.
I remember we were holding hands, and then we weren’t,
but I can’t recall who lifted the first finger, or who was first
out the door. The streets filled with our neighbors,
everyone marching slowly away from their homes,
away, slowly, from one another. Nothing to guide
their steps, they moved in arbitrary waves, silently,
dull-eyed, you were soon lost among them.

I was walking too, though I was looking up.
I watched a flock of blackbirds flying overhead,
and wondered what they made of the chaos:
if, from their height, it seemed we were all
moving in the same direction.